Political Novelist Rules His Private Erotic World

November 19, 1990|By Roger Cohen, New York Times

NEW YORK — ''Never,'' the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa said, ''is a word that I use about very few things. But about politics I can say quite definitely: nevermore. Nevermore for any reason will I get involved, nevermore will I quit writing.''

Alive and apparently unscathed after three years of crisscrossing his impoverished and terrorist-wracked country in pursuit of the presidency, Vargas Llosa says he is disappointed but also ''a bit relieved'' that the electorate rejected him in June in favor of Alberto Fujimori, a Japanese-Peruvian agronomist.

The author's campaign was born of a sense of responsibility in the face of the tragedy of Peru and a conviction that the country could change and prosper with a free-market economy.

But, switching from his excellent English to his perfect French, this urbane and elegant man with the swift and piercing amber eyes of a cat confesses that le coeur n'y etait pas - that his ''heart was not in it.''

So he is back to his literary calling. And in a short but dense erotic novel called In Praise of the Stepmother, written as he was first involving himself in politics in 1987 and just published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, he reveals that public activity never diverted him from his fundamental concern with the private domain.

The hero, Don Rigoberto, the general manager of an insurance company, has turned his back on society to create a satisfying and intensely private erotic world.

It is built around his suave attentions to his new wife, Dona Lucrecia, his love of erotic paintings and his meticulous regard for washing as a solemn and painstaking rite before lovemaking.

The paintings - six of which are reproduced in the book - stimulate Don Rigoberto's lascivious reveries; the washing primes his body for their fulfillment; and Dona Lucrecia, who has just turned 40, blissfully combines fantasy and physical fact.

Until, that is, Don Rigoberto's pubescent son by his first marriage intrudes on this domestic paradise, and Dona Lucrecia reveals fantasies of her own.

''The book is about a man using imagination added to purely physical pleasure to try to materialize a personal rather than a social utopia,'' said Vargas Llosa, 54.

Clenching his right hand into a fist, he added: ''To write is a relief from life's problems. It is a way in which you revenge yourself. In art, the writer achieves utopia. But any attempt to achieve social utopia is bound to catastrophe. If you want a society of saints, the result is hell, repression, totalitarianism and persecution.''

Don Rigoberto has traced a path from public involvement to privacy. The book says: ''In his youth he had been a fervent militant in Catholic Action and dreamed of changing the world. He soon realized that, like all collective ideals, that particular one was an impossible dream, doomed to failure.''

From this, the insurance manager is led to conjecture that ''as an ideal, perfection was perhaps possible for the isolated individual, if restricted to a limited sphere in space (cleanliness or corporeal sanctity, for example, or the practice of eroticism).'' Happiness, he concludes, is ''temporal, individual and in exceptional circumstances twofold, on extremely rare occasions tripartite, and never collective, civic.''

Asked why he chose an erotic theme, the writer said he felt that the subject had chosen him. ''The reason for doing this is probably deeply submerged in my own personality - something to do with my own obsessions,'' he said.

But there was a broader reason, too. Eroticism is about the individual, a statement of a person's independence; and Vargas Llosa sees individualism being threatened throughout the world.

''I strongly believe in the individual's sovereignty,'' he declared. ''But the fact is that it is not only collectivist or statist ideologies but also the very democracies and modern societies that we defend which have been eroding and limiting the individual. Well, eroticism is inseparably individualistic. It has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me. It is a statement of the individual's sovereignty.''

In his 26 years as an author, during which he has published more than a dozen novels, Vargas Llosa said, he had never enjoyed writing a book as much as he did this one.

Compared with the language in such works as Conversation in the Cathedral or The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, where the backdrop is Peru in its misery rather than one man's beautiful home, the prose of In Praise of the Stepmother is indeed lush, sinuous and complex.

''Writing is not usually such a happy exerience for me,'' the author said. ''It is very painful, but this time I had great pleasure. Usually, my language is restrained and invisible. But this story about obsessions and rituals required a visible and sensual language that'' - he twined his manicured fingers together as he sought the phrase - ''conveyed music and sensations. It also required a great effort to avoid the vulgarity of obscenity. I rewrote it many times.''

The book leaves several questions hanging. Is Don Rigoberto, in the end, nothing more than a deluded fool, an aging and pathetic cuckold? Can even a limited domestic paradise last? How innocent is Don Rigoberto's pubescent son? Why is innocence so attractive and yet destructive? Vargas Llosa artfully provides no answers. He said: ''The book lets you wonder, is it all a joke? It is an entertainment, but also something more.''